The other day I got an e-mail from a Bay Area guy who works for Zamberlan, the Italian boot manufacturer. He wondered if I’d like to try out some Zamberlans and report the results here.
In the past I’ve declined offers of stuff in exchange for links/coverage. Made me feel all pure-of-heart, you know, but the main thing was keeping it simple. Commerce would be just one more blog-related thing I’d be doing instead of hiking.
I decided to take up the guy’s offer, though, because I like the Zamberlan story: An Italian guy who repairs shoes for a living after World War I decides to start making boots for hiking in the hills nearby. After awhile he earns a rep for making great shoes and pretty soon he’s got a good business going. Seventy years later the Zamberlan family is still building boots at the foot of the Piccole Dolomiti. The boots aren’t cheap by any stretch — the top-of-the-line models are in the $200 range — but the reviews on the company’s product pages are overwhelmingly positive.
I should be getting the Zamberlan samples in the next couple days, and reports on their prospects will show up after that. With any luck, they’ll fit, and with further good fortune, none of y’all will be rendered comatose by my accounts of trying them out.
I get three or four offers like that each week. I was so concerned early on about both the temptation and appearance of conflict-of-interest when dealing with gear manufacturers that I created a relationship with Backpack Gear Test (BGT) to provide all of the gear reviews for The WildeBeat.
So now, whenever I get an offer to review gear, I refer them to BGT.
Here’s a suggestion, Tom: Why don’t you test these boots for your first owner review for BGT? You can still post excerpts and links to the BGT review on Two-Heel Drive.
Appreciate the suggestion … if I get any more offers I may have to go that route.
tom, you corporate slut. once they get you with one, they’ll be no stopping it. you’ll want more. a treking pole. a few pairs of shorts. a little backpack. and why not? you work hard damn it. what’s a matter with showing a guy a little appreciation with some gear. next thing you know you’ll be waking up in a puddle of saliva surrounded by mountains of gear and wondering how it all went so bad. so sad tom.
Just because it happened to you doesn’t mean it’ll happen to everybody else.
booo! They’ve already payed for the boots with your single post. Now you’re planning on writing about them in the future. booo!!
you think we get free stuff from the outdoor industry? from like the north face? they love what we write about them. especially the gestapo post. hell no, we don’t get free stuff. anything we get, we pay for via pro deals. when people send us stuff unsolicited, which we just donate to good causes. as a general rule , we don’t accept free stuff. ruins our objectivity. meaning, we might actually have to write somethign nice for once. 😉
I’m flattered about the concerns for my mortal soul and everything.
My guiding principle is that I do not sell out cheap. Certainly not for the cost of a couple pairs of shoes. Now if the Zamberlan clan wants to front me a million dollars, that’d be another matter. (And the great thing is, Climb_CA would have to denounce me as the worst thing since synthetic socks. That alone would make it all worth doing.)
This does remind me of why I enjoyed the simplicity of telling people hoping for some coverage that I don’t normally do that kind of thing.
A couple shoe reviews at a hiking blog with a couple hundred daily readers is not going to topple the world as we know it.
don’t you worry, we’ll still read you blog. despite your questionable ethics. i kid. you’re a good man, a stellar hiker, and a role model to us all. don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. if they do, the’ll end up on the front of GoBlog photoshopped into a picture of J. Edgar Hoover wearing a dress. or something equally strange, yet somehow disturbingly funny.
Karma. ‘Nuff said. 😉
Hey, let’s speak rhetorically for a second. If somebody offers to give something and you turn that person down, human nature is such that the would-be giver will experience disappointment in you, if not also a mild hardening of the heart. You as the receiver of that gift, on the other hand, will not experience the joy of the giver that comes with their spirit of giving. Plus, in not receiving their intended gift, you will not experience the joy of knowing why they chose you to give it to. Do that enough times to the same person, and they will shut you out, maybe even proselytize against you.
So why disrespect someone who sincerely respects you enough to want to know your opinion about something they care about?
In native American society, a refuser of a gift would have become an immediate enemy, completely disdained as lower in stature than a battlefield adversary. In short: a target.
Better, then, to let this “ethical dilemma” be the academic claptrap that it is, be sincere about who you get a gift from, honest about your review of it, and let the rest of us share in the original giver’s joy magnified by your words. Wine reviewers who receive free wine samples have been operating in this manner for years.
Finally, Diogenes can put down his lamp and take
a break! Thanks for your honesty Tom. I hope you enjoy your new shoes- by the way if you don’t like them you can send them on to me, (Size 13 please).